Back on June 24, Professor Jacobson blogged about how Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) encouraged people to harass Republicans and officials within President Donald Trump’s administration in public.
Now Waters is facing a protest organized by Oath Keepers and she does not approve.
Last month, Waters told supporters that if you see anyone in Trump’s administration out in public “you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
Waters also went on MSNBC and went more in depth about her message:
I have no sympathy for these people that are in this administration who know it’s wrong for what they’re doing on so many fronts. They tend to not want to confront this president or even leave, but they know what they’re doing is wrong. I want to tell you, these members of his cabinet who remain and try to defend him, they won’t be able to go to a restaurant, they won’t be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store. The people are going to turn on them.They’re going to protest. They’re absolutely going to harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president, ‘No, I can’t hang with you.’ This is wrong. This is unconscionable. We can’t keep doing this to children.
Oh my how her tune has changed! From ABC News:
She warned her supporters against being “baited” into counter-demonstrations or confrontations with the organization, which she said has a track record of “violent and provocative behavior.””I am requesting those individuals and groups planning a counter-protest to not be baited into confronting the Oath Keepers with any demonstrations in opposition,” Waters said. “Such an occurrence would only exacerbate tensions and increase the potential for conflict.”She urged supporters to avoid protesting on the same date and time as protests planned by the Oath Keepers.”The Oath Keepers would like nothing more than to inflame racial tensions and create an explosive conflict in our community,” Waters said. “The group is known to protest in military-style clothing while carrying various assault weapons.”
At Hot Air, Jazz Show noted that Oath Keepers have planned the protest at Waters’ congressional office. If “they keep to the sidewalks, don’t block traffic or prevent constituent access to the office, it’s nothing more than a typical political protest.”
From The Washington Examiner:
The Oath Keepers describe themselves as a “non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’”The group said in its call to action for protests outside Waters’ office set for Thursday that it is the launch of an ongoing protest that could persist for several weeks.“This is both a protest against Maxine Waters’ incitement of terrorism, and a stand FOR ICE and the Border Patrol, as they enforce the perfectly constitutional immigration and naturalization laws of this nation,” the Oath Keepers said.
Like Jazz, I cannot believe that Waters warned her constituents that Oath Keepers desire an armed confrontation:
I’ll grant you that Stewart Rhodes goes way over the top in terms of his rhetoric at times, but the group’s record has been greatly overblown in liberal panic rooms. The SPLC defines them as a hate group (of course, I think they said that about the Boy Scouts too), but actual incidents of open warfare and violence by the group are strictly vaporware.
Waters said that the officers from the LAPD will be on hand “to ensure safety and security.”
I’ll keep an eye on this protest and update this post if anything outrageous happens.
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